Tag Archives: PuzzleNation

A brand-new puzzle set for the Penny Dell Crosswords app!

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It has been a busy summer here at PuzzleNation, especially with regards to the Penny Dell Crosswords App.

We launched several new puzzle sets for the app, including our June and July Deluxe puzzle sets, as well as Collection Eight, our 150-puzzle pack we mentioned a few weeks ago.

We also debuted our free daily puzzle feature for all app users!

And in case you’re not following us on Twitter or Facebook, we’re also doing a Crossword Clue Challenge every weekday at 3 PM, testing your familiarity with classic crossword clues as well as trickier fare!

But that’s not all! We’re excited to announce our newest downloadable content for the Penny Dell Crosswords app, the Back to School Deluxe set, is now available through the App Store!

That’s right, it’s almost Back to School time, and our August Deluxe set offers 35 terrific themed puzzles. Not only do you get 30 easy, medium, and hard puzzles, but there are 5 bonus puzzles you can unlock as you solve!

We are committed to providing you with the best puzzle games on the market today, and with this deluxe set of puzzles, we’ve continued that proud tradition. Terrific crosswords right in your pocket! What more could you ask for?

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

Can you solve BuzzFeed’s 14 Trickiest Crossword Clues?

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Last week, a fellow puzzler passed along this link, which had an intriguing premise. The folks at BuzzFeed asked prominent crossword constructors to contribute their favorite tricky or misleading crossword clues, challenging the audience to puzzle out as many of them as possible.

The constructors involved are a who’s who of top puzzlers, including Ben Tausig, Peter Gordon, Elizabeth C. Gorski, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Matt Gaffney, and several of the puzzlers involved in the Indie 500 tournament: Erik Agard, Neville Fogarty, Andy Kravis, and Evan Birnholz.

There are 14 tricky clues, each with either some crafty wordplay or some delightfully wicked humor attached.

Now, fair warning, some of these are a bit risque (one drops the f-bomb), but they will all put your puzzly skills to the test.

[I wonder how Nancy Drew would do…]

My personal favorites were “Journey accompanier, often [9 letters]” and “Michigan county I promise never to use in a crossword again [6 letters],” both of which involve a level of honesty and pop culture awareness that transcends standard crossing cluing.

I managed to riddle out 10 of the 14 clues. Some of them were vague enough to allow for multiple answers — you don’t have a grid or crossing entries to help you limit options, after all — so I gave myself credit if the correct answer was one of several that came to mind.

How did you do on this crafty BuzzFeed challenge, PuzzleNationers? Let me know! I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Crosswordnado edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And today, I’m posting solutions to our Sharknado and Crosswordese puzzles from the last two weeks!

Two Follow-Up Fridays ago, I posted a deduction puzzle in honor of Sharknado 3 rampaging its way across TV screens all over the world, and I challenged you to complete the schedule of mayhem wrought by our five heroes with five different weapons across five different cities on five different days! (Whew!)

How did you do?

And that brings us to our second solution. Last week, we discussed crosswordese — those words that only seem to appear in crosswords, to the dismay and bafflement of casual solvers — and I created a 9×9 grid loaded with crosswordese.

Did you conquer the challenge?

ACROSS

1. Toward shelter, to salty types — ALEE
3. Arrow poison OR how a child might describe their belly button in writing — INEE
5. Flightless bird OR Zeus’s mother — RHEA
6. Hireling or slave — ESNE
8. “Kentucky Jones” actor OR response akin to “Duh” — DER
9. Compass dir. OR inhabitant’s suffix — ESE
12. Wide-shoe width OR sound of an excited squeal — EEE
15. No longer working, for short OR soak flax or hemp — RET
16. Like a feeble old woman OR anagram of a UFO pilot — ANILE
17. Actress Balin OR Pig ____ poke — INA

DOWN

1. Mean alternate spelling for an eagle’s nest — AYRIE
2. Old-timey exclamation — EGAD
3. Unnecessarily obscure French river or part of the Rhone-Alpes region — ISERE
4. Supplement OR misspelling of a popular cat from a FOX Saturday morning cartoon — EKE
7. Maui goose — NENE
10. An abbreviated adjective covering school K through 12 OR how you might greet a Chicago railway — ELHI
11. My least favorite example of crosswordese OR good and mad — IRED
12. Ornamental needlecase — ETUI
13. Movie feline OR “Frozen” character — ELSA
14. Shooting marble OR abbreviation for this missing phrase: “truth, justice, and ____” — TAW

I hope you enjoyed both of these challenging puzzles! If you haven’t had your fill of crafty puzzlers, worry not! We’ll be tackling another tough brain teaser in two weeks!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

Lollapuzzoola 8 is near!

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This Saturday, August 8, marks the eighth annual Lollapuzzoola!

A puzzle tournament and beloved yearly tradition for top constructors and solvers, Lollapuzzoola is touted by its organizers as “the best tournament held in New York on a Saturday in August.”

The brainchild of Ryan Hecht and Brian Cimmet, this all-crossword puzzle tournament has a different unifying theme each year (last year was baseball, two years ago was birds) and is administered by the dynamic duo of Cimmet and Patrick Blindauer.

[Blindauer and Cimmet, ready to put your puzzly mettle to the test.]

But if you can’t make it to NYC this weekend, worry not! There’s an At-Home Division that will allow you to participate as if you were there! You’ll get your puzzles by email the day after the actual tournament for a very reasonable $10 fee!

I was hoping I’d get to attend this year — it would be fun to participate AND compare and contrast ACPT and Lollapuzzoola — but 8/8 is also my friend’s wedding day. Hopefully, last year’s Locals Division winner Patti Varol will provide a fun recap again!

I’m definitely looking forward to trying out the puzzles! Last year’s were a diabolical treat. (Click here for full details!)

Are you attending Lollapuzzoola or solving from home? Let me know! I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

Get thee to a punnery!

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Wordplay is an integral part of many puzzles, from anagrams and rhymes to letter-shifting and palindromes. But perhaps the most predominant form of wordplay is the pun. (Where would Wordplay Wednesday be without them?)

Sometimes puns are Cryptogram answers or Anagram Magic Squares solutions. Sometimes they’re fiendish crossword puzzle clues that send you one way when your answer lies elsewhere, or they’re the key to figuring out the theme entries in a Thursday New York Times puzzle.

Whether it’s a groaner or one that makes you laugh out loud, a pun can add humor and style to a puzzle.

Some of my fellow puzzlers have some classics to their credit, like Penny Press editor Keith Yarbrough’s “Public hanging” for ART, or crossword guru Eileen Saunders’ “Wombmates?” for TWINS.

But it’s not just in puzzles. Social media has given the art of punnery a new lease of life. Several YouTubers have made puns their stock in trade, like My Drunk Kitchen’s Hannah Hart and You Deserve a Drink’s Mamrie Hart. (No relation.)

Check out this video by musician and pun enthusiast Andrew Huang:

Twitter is also home to some monstrously talented punsmiths. Here are two recent favorites I stumbled across:

And did you know there are even contests and prizes for great puns?

Every May, the O. Henry Pun-Off attracts wordplay aficionados from all over to ply their trade in front of a live audience!

For a primo example, here’s a video of champion Jerzy Gwiazdowski busting out a flurry of geography puns:

What are some of your favorite puns, fellow puzzlers? Are they from puzzles, jokes, Internet memes? Leave them in the comments!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: New Puzzle Set edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And today, we’re talking about our flagship product, the Penny Dell Crosswords App!

This has been a great summer for us and the app! Not only are we offering a free daily puzzle to all of our users, but we’ve added a new collection to our library of puzzles for in-app purchase!

Collection Eight features 150 puzzles, collected in 5 different 30-puzzle sets: Penny Easy, Penny Medium, Penny Hard, Dell Easy, and Dell Medium! This value pack contains all five of those sets and saves you 30% over buying them individually! It’s more puzzle bang for your puzzle buck!

Click here to check out all of the terrific features of the app AND all of our available puzzle sets! You can’t go wrong with PuzzleNation and the Penny Dell Crosswords app! Enjoy!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!